Through the annals of abandoned superhero movies, and masked marvel projects which never happened, Spider-Man 4 remains one of the greater ‘what ifs.’ This is in no small part because millions of fans around the world had already seen what Sam Raimi and company brought to the wallcrawler in what is now known as “the Spider-Man Trilogy,” and most generally loved two-thirds of that. So when Raimi famously derailed the project in late 2009—effectively leading to its cancellation—there were plenty of folks upset by the idea that we’d never see Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker again.

Things of course change. That said we’ve still only had hints at what Raimi’s abandoned Spider-Man 4 would’ve looked like. John Malkovich was expected to play the Vulture; Anne Hathaway was at least very close to being cast as Felicia Hardy (it’s vague whether she officially signed on...